It had taken a second for him to realise what she was doing, what she was saying. Through the fog of euphoria and alcohol it had been like a bizarre dream. But as he began to withdraw his hand, she had clutched it with her own, pushing his fingers hard against her soft flesh. ‘It’s all right, Da. I understand about men’s needs. And I know about prison, what it can do to a man. I know it might be difficult for you to do it, I understand. With me, it won’t matter.’ She had reached out and stroked his hair with her other hand, her eyes dark and limpid. ‘You can take all the time in the world.’
His voice was hoarse, touched by her tenderness, yet confused and angered at what the world had done to her, how it had distorted her innocent mind. ‘Clodie, you are my daughter.’
But she had held his hand fast. ‘Yes, Da, and I love you.’ He felt the stiffening of her nipple against his palm through the material of her dress. ‘See, some things cannot lie.’
Then he watched her expression of dismay, the disappointed pout of her mouth as he pulled his hand free and climbed, unsteadily, to his feet. ‘We will never speak of this again. Do you understand?’
And he had closed the door, aware that she was quietly sobbing. By the morning he had gone, spirited away during the night by his old friends in the Provisionals. Six months later he was arrested while crossing the border on a raid to bomb an RUC police station.
Only later, back in the Maze, did he have time to reflect on the incident with his daughter that had unsettled him so much. To Clodagh, he decided, he had become the personification of the fight against those forces that had destroyed her family and her childhood. He was more than a father, he was a hero; yet a hero whom she knew, could trust, could touch. It was a bonding of blood. The natural love of a daughter had become grotesquely distorted into a passionate obsession. And she, in her confused devotion, had attempted to replace her own dead mother in the only way she knew how.
Even now, as he sat in the isolated cottage awaiting her return, he could still remember the burning passion of that moment. For one split second, caught up in the stupidity of drink, he had been tempted and he could never forgive himself for that. How different would be their relationship now, he wondered, if he had succumbed? And he thanked God that he hadn’t. It just made him more determined than ever to rid his country of the British scourge that had ruined his and his daughters’ lives. To this day he had never heard Clodagh mention that there was a man in her life; it was his belief that there never had been.
He heard the car pull up and moments later she entered the cottage, a smile of triumph on her face. She reached across and kissed his cheek. ‘We’ve done it, Da. They really liked what they saw.’
‘You did it, Clodie. You did it all.’
She sat in an upright chair, stretched her legs and kicked off her high heels before reaching for the bottle to pour a glass. Then she noticed what he had been working on. ‘You shouldn’t solder when you’re drunk. It could be dangerous.’
He laughed. ‘I’m not drunk. You forget, daughter, that I’m not as young as I was. My eyesight’s not so good and my hand tends to shake — and I can’t get on with those surgeon’s gloves.’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve told you, you should let me do the tricky stuff. Your work might be good, but it’s untidy.’
‘Sure you have your mother’s tongue on you, girl. Now let me be.’
Her laugh was a relief from the day’s tensions. ‘Whatever you say, you’re the boss, Aidan.’
He didn’t understand. ‘Aidan?’
‘That’s the codename they’ve decided to give you. AIDAN. Anglicised as Hugh, from the old Celtic god of sun and fire. It was my idea — they thought it doubly suitable.’
‘AIDAN,’ he repeated, thoughtfully.
3
It was late May — with AIDAN’s experimental campaign still creating havoc across Northern Ireland — when Hugh Dougan and his daughter completed their final briefing and personal firearms training at Colloney Strand in County Sligo. They then flew separately to Paris from Shannon, following the route used earlier by McGirl. A few days later they were on the same ferry as it crossed a mirror-smooth North Sea to dock in Newcastle.
A small fleet of secondhand vehicles had been purchased at auction by PIRA’s so-called ‘flying column’, its logistical wing on the mainland which supported individual active service units. Each vehicle was fitted with false number plates of identical legitimate models that had been spotted on the streets of major cities. Some vans and cars would be used as mobile bombs; others, including three motorcycles, would be used as transport for the new AID AN active service unit. One such car was waiting with a driver at the docks, ready to take them to the newly rented house near the Henley farm.
The stocks of fertiliser were already mounting in the secure barn together with catering supplies of icing sugar. McGirl’s farm manager was well advanced in his programme of grinding and refining vast quantities of the home-made explosive mixture.
In early June the campaign began.
It started simply enough. A time-delay device containing incendiary powder and lighter-fuel capsules was left in the soft furnishings department of an Oxford Street store. A vague thirty minute warning was issued at noon, but with no recognised codeword. With an accuracy that was to become an AIDAN hallmark, a photo flashbulb triggered the device at the predicted time while police were trying to find it amongst hundreds of rolls of curtain and dressmaking fabric. The store was still only partially evacuated.
Only when the initially small blaze activated the automatic sprinkler system did London witness the first example of AIDAN’s trickery. Attached to the incendiary was a secondary device containing a sodium base. The more water that poured from the ceiling, the fiercer became the blaze. In seconds the entire floor had developed into a raging fireball that swept through two entire floors before it was brought under control.
It was a mirror incident of what had happened to a Londonderry store just four weeks earlier.
Twenty Oxford Street shoppers were hurt in the scramble to escape, three suffering serious injuries. Several policemen and fire crew were treated for smoke inhalation. That evening’s television news carried graphic eyewitness reports of the terror and panic in the crowds as they had rushed for the escalators and stairs.
Two days later, following an uncoded tip-off to the Samaritans, an explosive device was found in a lamppost in Hammersmith. After it had been dismantled by hand, its positioning such that it was impossible to use a remote ‘disrupter’, the bomb was found to be made up of a dummy Semtex charge. That afternoon an identical charge was found in the Fulham Road. An officer from the police Explosives Section had just confirmed that it was another dummy device when a nearby Keep Left bollard exploded. Two policemen attending the scene were seriously injured.
A further two days elapsed before a black briefcase was found abandoned at a bus stop a quarter of a mile from Paddington Green, home of Londo’n’s top-security police station to which all terrorist suspects are taken. An alert member of the public informed a young police constable on traffic duty.
Aware of the recent incidents, the officer radioed the duty inspector and the area was sealed off. A bomb-disposal expert from the Met’s Explosives Section was called in to examine the briefcase: it was found to contain innocuous business papers and a round of chicken sandwiches wrapped in cellophane. Nervous laughs all round and merciless leg-pulls from the constable’s mates.
The cleared briefcase was taken to the regular front office of Paddington Green where the desk sergeant arranged for the lost property to be deposited in store.